Tuesday, July 27, 2010

YouTube- it's not cute animals anymore

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Pop Culture Tuesday

So there's this website called YouTube.  Have you heard of it?  Yeah you've seen cute videos of cats falling off of things or a skateboarding dog.  Whatever, it's not like it a legit form of entertainment, right?

My dears you are SO very wrong.  
Here's the thing, if you're reading this blog chances are you either, A know me personally, (Hi Mom) or B want to write something, most likely YA lit. 

Many people who write YA do not have the profound pleasure of hanging around teenagers 10 months out of the year... sucks to be you.  

No most YA author's have their own kids or are in their mid 20's and are trying to recall that horrific time in their lives when everything sucked and your friends betrayed you and your skin exploded and no one want to date you because you didn't have boobs.  Or that could have been my teenage experaince. 

Anyway for most people teenagers out of their social group (and they should be, it fraking creepy to be 31 with a moragage and a kid hanging out at pharm party or a texting party.) 

So how can you get to know what a teenager is really like?  There's the internet and YouTube.  

Here's what you need to know, there's LOTS of videos out there on YouTube but I'm going to talk about four YouTubers.  

Shane Dawson, he's young, funny, dresses up in a lot of his videos, isn't censored, wears too much red lipstick and has over  1.7 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!   Subscribers aren't people who watch 1 video and are done with you, they watch TONS of videos.
Most of them are, yep you guessed it TEENAGERS.  Watching his a video and you'll see why. 
Are you writing a wacky male lead?  Shane Dawson is a great reference.




Next person I want to talk about it IJustine.  First off, she's beauitful, her lips are shiny and her hair is perfect and she must be every geek fanasity girl.  She does these cute wacky videos and here's the thing, SHE DOES THEM.  She's clever and funny and TECHIE!  She also has over a Million subscribers.  She's a LIFECASTER which means she vlogs constantly.  I subscribed to her yesterday and she's already posted 4 vidoes. 



Shane and Ijustine are doing with the cameras what network TV can't do.  Maintain Viewership.  

These two also sometimes play to the lowest common demomnater.

Charlie does not.  He's smart, young, completely lost and British.  He has a brain in his head and isn't sure exactly how to use it.  



Lastly it's emlfiy. She's geeky, she's smart, she's quirky.  She's also highly entertaining.  She's me in high school.  She also has the least amount of videos and the least followers.  



You Tube is Legit.  Kids/teenagers are creating interesting and entertaining content out there.  You're future readers are watching it.  

Time to face it, the internet isn't going away.  Fraking awesome!



4 comments:

  1. A real eye-opener. I will check them all out!!

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  2. Hi, Erinn. Even though I am not a writer, the video's have given me a lot of insight into the teenage brain. Very impressive actually.

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  3. Oh wow, thank you for the links!

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  4. Thanks for the links. Interesting stuff for the YA writer to tuck away...
    :)

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